I awoke to the sound of my front door splintering from its hinges. The entire house shook and boots thundered up the stairs. The dreamy bubble of student life burst and the harsh realities of the real world came flooding in.

"Police! Everyone stay where you are!" Dark figures burst in, and fear raced through my body as the officers began to dismantle my room.

We were all aware of what had been going on under our roof, but the gravity of the situation only occurred to me as I sat handcuffed in my bed. It was then that I realised what was happening and what the consequences would be for my housemate.

Everyone knows students take drugs; it's enshrined in popular culture and celebrated in films. What many don't consider is that they might sell them too.

But the fact that some students are drug dealers should come as no surprise. Students often face financial hardship, and selling drugs is a lucrative option.

There is a ready market, too – many students are keen to avoid meeting potentially dangerous strangers to buy drugs, preferring instead to visit a local student dealer whom their mates have recommended.

University is a time when people experiment with things – they have more sex, flirt with radical ideologies, go out more, and yes, take more drugs.

A hall of residence is a dense and lucrative market: thousands of tiny rooms stacked up like egg boxes and populated by the chemical generation. Philosophy stoners discussing the transcendental limits of their consciousness, rugby lads guzzling Jägerbombs and "scouting for gash" and underground ravers crushing up ketamine or MDMA before hitting the dance floor for a 12-hour stint.

I can't say if it is morally or socially desirable, but it's a lived reality. Drug culture has gone mainstream among students, and with the law as it is, it looks like the market will only keep growing, particularly in universities.

To lessen the burden of loans and overdrafts, or simply to survive, many students are prepared to take the risk and sell drugs. Examples of students being push to extreme and deprived means are plenty. Recently it was revealed by a study published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education that nearly a third of women working in strip clubs are students, often from middle-class families.

Although a similar study hasn't yet been done about student drug dealers, in just my university alone I know of three people who are on bail for selling drugs.

I've been shocked by the levels of binge drinking and reckless drug consumption I've witnessed at university. Only evidence-based laws, decriminalisation, regulation and proper education can curb the intoxicant epidemic that the UK has slid into. Drug education tries to teach us to fear drugs, not how to live with them.

What we see in pop culture and the media about drugs contradicts what we're told in school. The hypocrisy is stark; Barack Obama has admitted to taking cocaine and Jay-z, the self-styled role model of urban cool, has spoken openly about his past life as a drug dealer. We need education that teaches adolescents to deal with these realities, to understand drugs, to control consumption and to identify problem users.

But users are not the only victims of the drug industry. The law comes down with draconian force on those who sell drugs.

My housemate isn't a bad person, she was just desperate. Her parents had moved abroad, she was crippled by debt and knew she had little chance of finding a graduate job next year, let alone a roof over her head. Now she's looking at five years in jail and a criminal record for life.

Selling drugs is fast becoming a cottage industry for many students and it's a reflection of what's happening across society. Where there is rising inequality and economic desperation, more and more reasonable people are entering this lucrative industry.

Drug dealers are no longer just violent criminals on the fringes of society, they are the sons and daughters of solicitors and dentists. It's time the state started to look after a section of society it has criminalised and marginalised.